Limerick MMDS

TVDX

Mesh aerials are present around Limerick.
Some seem to point towards the city centre transmission tower while others seem to point towards the golf balls hill.

Is the hill Digital MMDS and the city centre Analog MMDS?.
Anyone know?.

Also, is it an easy job to install a mesh aerial yourself to get MMDS without having the chrous jobbers ruining the place?.

I presume it's just like tuning a satellite dish, no?.

MisterAnarchy

I fear this will be closed quite quickly.
Its not just the mesh grid you need,you also need a downconverter and a suitable power supply for it.
Tres difficile to get.

zilog_jones

Also if you do get such things, you are invariably stealing Chorus' service.
Woodcock Hill and the other transmitter (is it on the mast on Roches St. on top of the Eircom exchange?) offer both analogue and digital services AFAIK. However they planned on stopping the analogue transmissions 2 months ago, which has yet to happen.

TVDX

Well, I'm not interested in actually putting one up.
I am just trying to understand the technology really.

I'm surprised that the analogue mmds is still up and running after all this time.
Shouldn't that be their priority, moving those customers to digital.

What's the analogue line up on MMDS in Limerick right now including channels that timeshare?.

boomerang

It's very restricted - eight or ten channels at most!

TV3, BBC1, BBC2, Channel 4, UTV, Sky News, Sky One, and I think some rotating shared channels like QVC, Discovery, Eurosport and MTV.

There's the transmitter site at Woodcock, but then there's a transmitter on Keeper Hill, too.

Solair

It's just taking them longer to replace all of the analogue customer's decoders. They can't shut down the analogue service until everyone's been moved onto digital. Once that's done, they can switch it off and re-use the bandwidth for digital services giving the customers a much wider range.

The only way you can get service is to contact Chorus and have them come out. They provide and own all of the end user equipment, unlike Sky where the equipment's provided on the same basis as a mobile phone i.e. minimum contract during which they re-coup the cost of the subsidised equipment.
Chorus' service is provided on exactly the same basis as cable TV i.e. they rent out the boxes / antennae etc and they remain property of Chorus.

The antennas used for digital are pretty neat anyway.

What you could do, if you want to avoid a mess from a chorus installer is run your own coax. Use satellite spec coax and run it to the point where you think the antenna should go.
Then ask the chorus guy to use that coax instead of draping more across your house.

I can't see why that would be any problem. You'd be saving him a lot of time and avoiding any hole drilling / cable clipping!

watty

Woodcock and Keeper hill according to my UPC contact. I thought maybe something at Roxboro, but no.

You have to subscribe. Any other option breaks criminal law.

Analogue will be off shortly. IF they did have any unencyrpted channels on MMDS, receiving those only would be a grey area. But there is only one or two and quality is rubbish. It's cheaper to buy a dish and sat receiver and have about 42 decent free TV and 20 decent radio out of 200+ TV and 70+ Radio that are legitimately free.

The MMDS dish/Aerial is exactly identical for Digital or Analogue.